


Twenty Facts You Didn't Know About Hermione Granger

by bellairestrella



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, Overuse of italics, Post-Hogwarts, Sensuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-20
Updated: 2008-07-20
Packaged: 2020-01-11 08:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18427316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellairestrella/pseuds/bellairestrella
Summary: If she could, she would not only give him the world – she would give him the universe.





	Twenty Facts You Didn't Know About Hermione Granger

One. She wonders why he has to be the hero, why he's the chosen one who can either die or live, why the world has to expect salvation from a boy who can't even save himself. She wishes it could have been someone else, _Ron_ even – just as long as it wasn't him. 

He could have so easily been another face in the crowd, a nameless someone living a normal life, who led a happy existence with his parents and many brothers and sisters. The life she knows he craves still, even now when he's living happily ever after.

(If she could, she would not only give him the world – she would give him the universe.)

Two. It wasn't Ginny's words that had stunned her into silence the day he'd cast _Sectumsempra_. 

It was his lack of remorse. 

Three. When she closes her eyes, she dreams of children with luminous green (or dark brown) irises and bushy brown (or messy, raven black) hair and sweet smiles adorning their mouths. She wakes up to the sound of their voices and cries into her pillow when she realizes that they exist only in her mind. 

Four. His name is a silent litany on her tongue and it's all she can do to close her lips between her teeth and bite down, hard, to keep from saying _HarryOhGodHarry_ when she reaches nirvana. Then she sees Ron's narrowed eyes and knows it's over between them before it's even begun.

Five. She doesn't fall in love with Harry Potter at first sight. Sure, she feels _connected_ to him in a way she can't explain, but that isn't love. It's quiet, intense, real, the indefinable _something_ they have. It pulls her in and she doesn't want to let go.

It's when she's sixteen, vulnerable and invincible and omniscient and _young_ ( _somewhere in-between foolish and wise_ ), that she realizes that she can't let him go. Not unless she's with him. 

That is the moment she falls for him. 

Six. She whispers _it's too late for us isn't it_ against his mouth and her lips curve into a smile when he mutters _we're happening now_ in her ear. She tilts her head back against the wall and feels like she's about to break apart _any second_ from the unsure, clumsy, exploring touch of his fingers. He tastes like sin and guilt and promises, she thinks fuzzily.

_We're fixing our mistake_ , she says, half joking, half serious, and he smirks as he kisses her throat. _There's nothing to fix_ , he says. _We're starting over_. 

Truth is, it never was too late for them.

Seven. She's afraid of failing him, but what frightens her the most is the thought of losing him. And it scares her, this love she has for him – it's endless, overwhelming and _true_. She knows that she loves him too much to let him go, too much that she refuses to believe that he's truly _gone_ , gone somewhere she can't follow. 

To her Harry is destruction and renewal. He's too young, too incredible, too alive to die.

When she hears his voice and sees him throw off the Invisibility Cloak she loses the ability to think, to feel, to _breathe_.

Seeing him alive is what keeps her fighting.

(If he dies, she dies too.) 

Eight. Green isn't her favorite color, for it reminds her of envy, of loss, of the forbidden.

Of what she can never have.

Black is her favorite color, for it reminds her of second chances, of beginnings, of secrets. 

Of what she has. 

Nine. She loved Ron, she really did – she just couldn't love him enough. With Harry she loves with everything she has – her heart, her soul, her faith, her hope, her truth.

With Harry, it's more than enough.

Ten. Ron had it partly right. She's always chosen Harry –

She will always choose him. 

(She knows it couldn't be anyone else.)

Eleven. She lets Diana Krall's smoky voice fill the air and soothe her to sleep. It is calming, _familiar_ to her, in a way Ron never was. She knows it's not surprising at all that she likes jazz music – hell, Harry teases her about it enough – yet strangely she doesn't care. 

For once, she's proud to be predictable.

Twelve. Books and S.P.E.W. ( _not_ spew, thank you very much) aren't the only things that define her. She laughs more than she cries, she analyzes more than she lets herself _feel_ everything, she cares, she loves too much. She is the soul and the heart and the mind, she is absolution.

She is salvation. She is Life.

Twelve and a Half. She hadn't had that many friends before she went to Hogwarts. The few that she had allowed herself to become close to left her as quickly as they'd come. _You're too boring, Hermione. There are other things you can do for fun besides read, you know_. 

She still wonders why he saved her life. Even though he barely knew her, he still remembered her.

( _It went beyond than his "saving people thing."_ )

She couldn't see herself by his side ( _in the beginning_ ) – now she realizes that's where she's meant to be. 

(And she's grateful that here, now, she's with him, where she's always been – by his side.)

Thirteen. She remembers her mum asking her _you would risk your life for this boy?_ once.

_For him_ , she had answered, _I would risk everything_. 

Fourteen. She listens in on Harry and Ron's talking about the locket Horcrux and its aftermath.

_I had no reason to be scared_ , Ron says. _You reckoned right, you know – she does love you like a brother_.

_It's funny_ , Harry replies. _I mean, look at us now. You and Hermione were always meant to be together. I'm happy with Ginny. That just shows you how nutters Voldemort was._

(He never says the word _wrong_.)

When she hears them chuckling about it, she's the only one who notices that Harry's laugh is hollow. 

Her throat tightens and she walks away, wishing that they both weren't cowards. 

Fifteen. She smiles to herself when she notices his jaw drop upon seeing her. _He finally saw me as a girl_. And she tries not to hope too much. 

She doesn't notice Viktor's scowl.

Sixteen: Her eyes are fixed on the sight of him tracing graceful arcs in the air. Seeing him fly makes her nervous and fear for his safety, it's true. Yet even when she's worrying about him she sees how this one simple act calms him and lets him escape from reality. 

_Much like Ginny was_.

She shoves that thought away and focuses her attention on his figure. She feels as if she's just swallowed her heart and she can't, doesn't take her eyes away from him until he catches the Snitch. He grins brilliantly, so brilliantly it reaches his eyes and makes them glow dark green, and she can't help but smile back at him, knowing that he won't see her.

Seventeen: When she first gets her Hogwarts letter she scoffs at it. _It's impossible, magic doesn't exist_ , she argues with herself. _It goes against the fundamental laws of nature_. 

She wants to believe in it, to let herself be proven wrong. Just one time. 

_I'm a witch_ spills from her mouth, sounding both terrible and beautiful all at once.

(She lets herself believe. And she never regrets it.)

Eighteen: The war is brutal and uncertain and too drawn out for her liking. Seconds turn into years and minutes turn into centuries, and she still feels lost. _So this is what living during the Second World War was like_ , she thinks glumly. _Everything bled blood and sweat and tears and death_. 

It's 1998, the year where everything will change, and she doesn't want to wait for the beginning of the end. 

_This is our decision to live fast and die young_.

She grabs his hand, presses a swift kiss to it, and never lets go.

Nineteen. When they find his parents' graves she holds back a gasp. She grips his hand tightly, silently letting him know that she's there, that she'll always be there, and she has to bite her lip hard when she sees the frozen tears on his face. 

Her heart stops beating then.

Nineteen and a Half. Sometimes she ponders what it feels like – being in love.

She's heard different things, different ideas associated with it –

(Love is never wanting to leave his side, the goosebumps on her arms when he's near, love is the dropping of her stomach, the feeling of completeness.

Love is home.)

She hears all these things, but still she wonders.

But then, how can she know, really? How can she know when she's never seen it firsthand, when she's only seen suggestions of what it could be – false pretensions of its splendor.

From this, she knows what love is not –

(Love is not the flow of gold coins from one hand to another, the endless tirade of worn-out conflicts, love is not the idolization of fame or beauty, the conquest for a prize. Love means more than this, yet she's not sure how much more.)

For some reason, when she thinks about love, she thinks about pain or, even worse, the endurance of pain. She feels like it's wrong, somehow, but she knows it fits, oddly enough.

Because she thinks that perhaps, she's never been closer to love than when she lets him go.

And maybe that's it.

To love someone truly, she must let him find happiness, even when that happiness doesn't involve her.

She knows what it feels like to be in love.

She just wishes it doesn't feel like this.

Twenty. She wonders if he knows how stunning he is. He enchants her above all ( _more than books, learning new things or the wizarding world ever will_ ) and she feels drawn to him ( _as if she's being pulled by gravity_ ). He's wild, fierce, reckless, unpredictable – he steals her breath away.

Looking at him now, all bright eyes that have known too much, have seen too much, and pale skin that flushes faintly with the pulse of youth and frightfully thin frame that never _quite_ fills out, despite being fed silly by Molly Weasley's cooking and the lightning bolt scar that doesn't define him ( _he defines it_ ), she realizes that he won't believe her if she told him how utterly captivating he is.

Maybe he doesn't know that he's beautiful, she muses, but he does know this: 

With him, she's never felt more alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Technically I put in more than twenty "facts." I'm too lazy to change the title. Anyway. This was inspired by **anythingbutgrey** 's fic "Ten Facts You Didn't Know About Jacob Black."
> 
> Fact #19.5 isn't mine - it was written by the loffly and talented **Haley**. "This is our decision to live fast and die young" comes from the song "Time To Pretend" by MGMT.


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